


Coming Home

by Estelle (Fielding)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 16:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19404103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fielding/pseuds/Estelle
Summary: Jake and Amy find their way back from Florida.





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> This story was meant to be a short scene between Jake and Holt after the events in Night Shift. It...turned into something totally different.

His first three days back passed in a weirdly satisfying haze of pain buffered by a deep sense of rightness (and pills – really strong pain pills). Amy started on the night shift the same day they flew back from Florida together, but it hardly mattered. Jake slept hard in her bed that night, woke for a few hours in the morning when she returned, slept with her again for six hours during the day. They had extremely uncomfortable but very necessary sex on the second afternoon – Amy on top, squatted over him so that she wouldn’t touch his thigh, and ‘squatted’ had to be about the least sexy word in Jake’s (growing, since Amy) vocabulary but at least it got the job done. After, they agreed sex could wait until Jake didn’t feel like screaming at the slightest pressure on his leg. Then they had dinner and Amy went back to work and Jake went back to sleep for ten more hours.

And everything was fine.

On the fourth day he couldn’t fall asleep with Amy when they went to bed, drawing curtains against the buttery late morning sunshine. Amy curled into him, head tucked into his shoulder away from the light, and he closed his eyes too. He’d taken his meds when Amy got home just after dawn, but the pain, though not terrible, was nagging, like something small but persistent was trying to chew its way out of his leg, which was a terrifying thought but he couldn’t unthink it once it was there. Jake recalled then that the last time he’d been given prescription pain meds he’d stopped taking them after only a few days when he realized they were making him anxious and restless.

Once Amy was fully sleep, he slipped out from under her, neatly sliding a pillow beneath her head in place of his shoulder. He hobbled into the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth, and when he glanced in the mirror over the sink he did a double-take, surprised by the nearly full beard covering his chin and jaw and climbing up his cheeks. He rubbed his palm over the stubble, trying to remember the last time he’d shaved – it would have been before he went on the run with Holt. At least a week ago. Without thinking, Jake opened the medicine cabinet to get his razor, and then paused, his hand hovering over the spot where he kept it, between his deodorant and Amy’s dental floss. The floss was there. His stuff was not.

Jake let his hand fall, just staring at the empty place on the shelf. She might have moved the razor to a drawer, and he started to open one beneath the sink then stopped. It felt somehow like an intrusion. This was her home, not his. Instead, Jake closed the cabinet door and limped out, turning off the bathroom light behind him. He spent the rest of the day on Amy’s couch, watching the third Die Hard, which was his least favorite, and therefore a perfect sort of white noise to the kind of thinking Jake supposed he needed to do.

He and Amy were good. They were in sync. They loved one another. She’d told him to stay with her while he recovered and he’d agreed without hesitation, because he didn’t want to be alone and because he lived on the fourth floor and she lived on the second, and crutches were a pain in the ass on stairs.

So they were fine, they were right again – but it also felt like they’d slid a little. Like they were back at six months of dating instead of 11 (or 17, but he wasn’t sure if they were supposed to count Florida Time). Six months had been fantastic. He’d aced their anniversary and he’d bought a mattress for her and they were light and breezy but also deeply into one another. But at six months they hadn’t been talking about moving in together. Jake hadn’t been slowing down to check out the window display of the jewelry shop two blocks from the precinct. It wasn’t that Jake didn’t still want to move in with her, didn’t still think that maybe-probably-someday he might consider asking her to marry him. It just didn’t feel like they were there yet, anymore. It was weird.

When Amy woke up just as the sun was starting to go down, Jake suggested they actually go out to dinner. He’d managed a shower while she was sleeping and had changed into real clothes – not sweat pants, not cargo shorts, but autumn-appropriate jeans and a flannel – for the first time in, well, longer than he could recall. Maybe since last spring. They had pizza, giant floppy slices that Jake folded in half, the grease running down his palm, and orange sodas and Amy laughed when he told her about how wrong the pizza had been in Florida, and also about the frozen burritos he’d eaten in the hot tub and the chicken wings that made him tear up because he missed even Hitchcock and Scully. Mostly it had just been Hot Pockets, so many Hot Pockets, consumed straight from the microwave while he watched TV that felt all wrong because the commercials were for gun shows and exotic pets and, like, meth.

They walked slowly back to her apartment, and Amy told him that her last three cases had been solved by the day shift because it was impossible to get anything done in the middle of the night while everyone else slept. She said everyone was miserable because they were tired all the time and they missed their families. She said nothing was the same, and even Terry was cranky. Jake said he was still dying to get back and Amy kissed him and said she knew that, they all did, and promised it would be soon. When they got to her place Jake leaned his crutches against a bookshelf and hopped to the couch, lifting his bad leg with both hands to rest in on the coffee table. Amy went to the kitchen to start coffee for the thermos she’d take with her to work, and when she came back she paused to lift his foot off the table and slide a throw pillow under it. She passed the remote control for the television to him, and she asked if he was ready for his next pain pills, already heading toward the bathroom where they kept the bottle.

Jake said, “I think I’m going to sleep at my place tonight.”

Amy paused in the bedroom doorway and turned back to him slowly. “Tonight? Like, now?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, and the way her face fell made him feel like a jerk. “Or, I mean, it doesn’t have to be tonight.”

Amy crossed back to him, perched on the edge of the coffee table beside his foot. “Are you sure?”

Jake didn’t know what exactly she was asking – was he sure about tonight, or about going home in general? – so he shrugged, which he realized was as good as answering no to whatever the question had been. He said, “I kind of miss my bed?”

Amy stared at him, a startled look on her face that he recognized from every time he’d ever said something dumb, and then she laughed, just a little. “Well, it was an expensive mattress,” she said.

Jake chuckled too and nodded. “I barely broke it in.”

“We,” Amy said, jabbing a finger at him, “barely broke it in.”

Jack laughed and wrapped his hand around her finger, and tugged her toward him. He leaned forward and kissed her, long enough to make it count.

“Breakfast at my place tomorrow,” he said, a little breathless.

“Did you get the gas and electricity turned back on?” Amy said. She started nipping along his jawline. “And the water? Cable? Wifi?”

“Okay, one more night here. Breakfast at my place the day after tomorrow,” Jake amended. And then they used Amy’s couch to practice breaking in Jake’s mattress, because there was plenty they could do that wasn’t quite sex.

+++

That night, after Amy went to work (20 minutes late, which was awesome), the insomnia really kicked in.

He’d taken his pills, so the throbbing in his thigh was dulled somewhat, but the rest of him felt pulled tight like a high wire, and every time he so much as lifted his leg the pain would spike so he couldn’t toss and turn or roll onto his stomach and bunch his pillow up under his cheek. He closed his eyes, hands folded over his belly, and focused on his breathing, thinking about the meditation app Amy had installed on her phone a few months ago, before Florida. He tried to recreate the meditation lady’s soft, even voice in his head, but instead he kept replaying his conversation with Amy about going back to his place. In the dark of her bedroom, lying alone, the doubts crept in. Maybe she was relieved he was leaving but she just didn’t want to say it.

Jake opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. The curtains were slightly open, and the orange light of a street lamp was unnaturally bright through the gap. He wanted to get up and close the curtains the rest of the way but it felt like too much effort. He closed his eyes. “Breathe in,“ said the meditation lady in his head.

He must have fallen asleep at some point because he woke suddenly from a dream, the image of a river, wild and frothing all around him, already fading as he blinked his eyes open. He turned toward the alarm clock on the bedside table but he already knew it was still the middle of the night: only a bit after 3 a.m. Jake groaned and ran a hand through his hair. He felt wide awake. He pushed himself up, hissing at the jolt of pain in his leg, and when it had receded somewhat he pulled back the covers and carefully maneuvered his legs to the floor. He reached for the crutches he kept resting on the wall beside the bed and leveraged himself up. In the living room, he dropped to the sofa, propped his leg on the coffee table, and turned on the TV. On one of the triple-digit channels he found a YA movie he’d seen a dozen times and kept it there, turned down low, and sunk deep into the couch. The sky was starting to turn gray before he finally drifted off.

+++

He woke to the key jerking in the front door and was wiping the grit from his eyes when Amy walked in. She looked first surprised, then sympathetic as she kicked off her shoes and dropped her purse on the table near the door.

“You’re up early,” she said, pausing behind him to plant a quick kiss on the top of his head.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. He craned his neck to look up at her and she smiled tiredly at him.

“Is it your leg?” she said, and he thought he could hear a shade of guilt in her voice.

“No, more the meds,” he said. “They make me wired.”

“Yeah, sometimes they do that.”

He asked about her day – her night – and she said nothing interesting had happened, and he believed her. Mostly it was a lot of paperwork left over from the day crew, she told him. Night shift was basically the clean-up crew. Jake tried to remember if he’d done that, left cases for Lohank or the other overnight detectives to tidy up while he went home and lived his normal day-shift life. Probably he had. That seemed like something he would do.

They ate a minimalist breakfast of toast for Amy and cereal for Jake and then Amy said, “Are you still thinking of going back to your place today?”

Jake nodded, and Amy got up and went to her purse, retrieving a notebook and pen. She sat beside him on the couch, a foot curled up under her, and tapped her pen on a page on which there was already a long list.

“I put this together last night,” she said. “It’s everything we need to do to make your place habitable again.”

Jake leaned over, his shoulder bumping against hers, to read it over. “Laundry? Sweeping? Dusting?” He glanced at her as she neatly printed another bullet point and line item: Clean out refrigerator. “I never did any of that when I lived there, why would I do it now?”

“I know you’re serious but please don’t tell me things like that,” Amy said primly, tapping her pen again. “No one’s been in there for six months. God only knows what kind of mold or mildew or spiders or creatures have taken over.”

“Creatures?”

“I’ve seen the mice in your desk, Jake,” Amy said. “And I know you didn’t clean up your place before you left town.”

Jake sighed and leaned further into her side, closing his eyes. She smelled nice, like laundry detergent and her shampoo that smelled weirdly and wonderfully like marshmallows, and underneath it all just a hint of stale precinct. He felt a wave of unexpected homesickness.

He wanted her to say it was too much, why bother, he should just move in with her, permanently. He wasn’t sure they were ready, or if he was ready. But he wanted her to say it anyway.

What she said was, “Don’t worry, I’ll help.”

+++

The U.S. Marshals had agreed to keep paying rent on Jake’s apartment during his stint in witness protection – something about leveraging it as a distraction, so it might take Figgis some time to figure out that he and Holt had disappeared. Jake and Amy had stopped by when he got back to town, coming directly from the airport, mostly to grab clean underwear and a toothbrush (but not a razor). But they’d only been there a few minutes and Jake had been so zoned out on meds and sleep deprivation and the pain shooting up and down his leg that he’d barely opened his eyes to look around. Amy had led him back out with a hand on his elbow, his backpack slung over her shoulder.

He was expecting the worst when they returned: mold and funky smells and a possum family moved into his bathroom. But it wasn’t too bad, mostly because his mom had apparently come by not long after he’d left and thrown away all his food and cleaned his dirty dishes and washed and folded the clothes in his hamper, plus the sheets and towels; she’d left him a note in her fluid cursive that he could barely read, but still made him tear up. They opened the windows to let the air inside circulate, and Amy went out for some basic groceries, and Jake used a crutch to swipe away the worst spider webs and borrowed Amy’s cell phone to call about restarting his utilities. It only took about an hour to get his place looking pretty normal, but by then it was late morning and Amy was fading badly, so Jake asked if she wanted to sleep at his place, since they were already there.

“Thanks, but I, um, bought some blackout curtains last night, on my – I still don’t know what to call it, dinner break? I think I’ll sleep better back at my place,” she said.

Jake sat at the end of his bed, watching her. She tucked her hair behind her ears.

“But we can get dinner tonight?” she said.

“C’mere,” he said, reaching for her hand. She came to him and he planted his hands on her waist to pull her closer. She ran her fingers through his hair, clasped her hands behind his neck. “Dinner would be great.”

She laughed and kissed him, soft and playful, and he breathed her in, let her fill him up.

+++

Jake napped after she left. He hadn’t really planned it – otherwise he might have insisted that Amy stay – but when he fell back on his mattress to remind himself how firm and bouncy it was he closed his eyes, and the lack of sleep the night before and small amount of physical exertion from the morning must have hit him because it was dusk when he stirred again. He stretched his arms over his head, felt the pleasant pull of muscles in his shoulders and back, then carefully bent his legs to see how that felt. It wasn’t good and he winced at the crack of pain in his thigh.

He was rubbing his leg, just above the spot where he’d been shot, and staring off toward the window to gauge the time when he remembered something he’d left behind. He reached toward the drawer on his nightstand and held his breath as he pulled it open and felt around blindly inside. It was still there – his cell phone, from before Florida. It was dead, but when he felt in the drawer again he found the lightning cable and plugged it in, waiting for the apple to start glowing.

They’d left town so fast. Jake had been allowed into his apartment only to retrieve one change of clothes, his contact lenses – whatever he might need for a day or two of travel while the marshals figured out where they’d be going. No personal items, they’d said. No photos, no trinkets, none of the sticky notes with Amy’s neat printing, telling him she’d gone for coffee or was out chasing a lead, telling him she loved him, all of them saved and stuffed into a drawer in the kitchen. He had to leave behind his phone, they said, but there was no time to back it up, and he’d panicked at all the lost photos and videos so they’d promised to keep the account active. He could have it back, they told him.

The phone started up after a few minutes, and there she was, Amy smiling, lighting up his room. He touched her face, reminded of the times he’d touched the crappy printout in his storage unit in Florida. He unlocked the phone and opened his text messages and wrote to her: “What time for dinner?”

The sound of his phone ringing in his hands seconds later made him yelp in surprise, his heart pounding. Her face was on his screen again.

“Hey,” he said.

“Jake-” she said, and he could tell, right away, that she was crying.

“Ames, what-”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick. “It’s just, your face and your name just showed up again, and I couldn’t-”

She broke off and they were both quiet, Amy’s cries muffled a bit, his eyes suddenly wet. He swept at his face to keep the tears from falling and swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

Amy laughed wetly. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, and added between sobs, “I’m so happy.”

He laughed too, and he reveled in this – in listening to the last hiccups of her tears, to her breathing, to her sniffling.

“How about 8?” she said.

Jake blinked, confused. “What?”

“For dinner,” she said. “Actually, it’ll be everyone. Gina’s called a secret meeting.”

That sounded like Gina. “Yeah,” Jake said. “Sure.”

“We don’t have to,” Amy said quickly. “If you just want it to be us, that’s fine.”

“No, no,” Jake said. “I mean, I pretty much always want it to be just us, but everyone is good. You know I love secrets.”

“You’re sure?”

Jake chuckled, because she was adorable but also because this was ridiculous. They were never this careful with one another. “I’m sure,” he said.

“Do you want me to come to your place first? Help you get ready or anything?” Amy said.

“I think I can manage,” he said, although he was already thinking about how long it was going to take him to change into real pants, and strategizing the best way to put on and tie his own shoes. Amy had been doing that for him. Maybe he could get away with flip-flops, to go with his hair.

He tried to remember if he had a razor here or if he’d need to go out and buy one.

“So we’ll see you at 8?” Amy said.

“I’ll be there.”

+++

It turned out it was all a set-up. By the time they’d shaved Jake’s blond tips, and then Charles’ too, it was almost 10 and everyone had to go into work, abandoning beers that were largely untouched. Amy kissed him and ran her palm over the top of his head, and over the smooth plane of his cheeks, and whispered something extremely explicit and possibly illegal in his ear before she left.

Gina alone stayed behind, because she refused to be on time for such a dumbass shift, she told him. She was halfway through her second beer and they toasted her poor work ethic.

“How did you even get those stupid tips anyway?” Gina said. She fingered at the shaggy layers she’d left him on top.

“I was very drunk,” he said, batting away her hand.

“Yeah, I’m gonna need more than that,” Gina said. “I’ve seen you drunk before, but never anywhere close to ‘blond tips’ drunk.”

Jake sighed and finished off his beer. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking, between the painkillers and the antibiotics. But he’d only had the one. Then the bartender, unprompted, placed another one in front of him and Jake just shook his head and took a sip of that one too.

“When I say drunk, I mean that I was basically hammered for, like, the first three weeks we were down there,” Jake said. “One day I was at the corner liquor store restocking the Tecate when I happened upon the hair products aisle and I saw the dye kits and I thought, ‘Hey, aren’t you supposed to change your appearance when you’re in witness protection?’ So I grabbed a blond one and took it home-”

“Question,” Gina said. “By ‘grab’ do you mean you stole it?”

“Maybe?” Jake said. “Seriously. So drunk.”

“Understood. Go on.”

“So,” Jake said, “I got home and I drank some of my Tecate and then I went to the bathroom to dye my hair and I guess I passed out part way through. I woke up on the bathroom floor, took a shower because I smelled really weird like I’d been sleeping in chlorine, which I assumed meant that I’d spent too much time in the hot tub, and I washed my hair and then three days later I realized I had accidental blond tips.”

“Whoa,” Gina said, holding up both hands. “Three days later?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t looking in mirrors much. They just reminded me how alone I was.”

“But three days?” she repeated, her voice somewhere between awe and horror.

“I would’ve gone longer but Holt saw my hair and kind of freaked out. Or, you know, went all blank-faced,” Jake said.

“Oh, you poor, sad man,” Gina said, and she grabbed his hand in both of hers and squeezed. “I had no idea it was that bad.”

“It really, really was,” Jake said, and they sat in silence for a moment, heads bowed. Then Jake looked back up and said, “But honestly, the tips weren’t that weird? Turns out they’re kind of popular down there and once I’d trimmed them a bit I think I was working them.”

“No, child,” Gina said. “No. No.”

Jake laughed and ran his hand through his hair and said, “Yeah, I guess not.”

“Anyway,” Gina said, “that wasn’t actually what I wanted to ask you.”

Jake tried to brace himself for literally anything, which was hard to do. Gina could be asking him what he thought of her shirt (was it new?) or if he could pick up her dry-cleaning (was that still a thing people did?) or how she should go about hiring an assassin (he wished he knew the answer to that one).

“Go on,” he said, and took a drink.

“Why aren’t you and Amy living together?”

Jake choked and coughed, then quickly wiped a hand over his mouth to make sure he hadn’t spit up any beer. Gina just watched.

“Um, how are you knowing that? Who is you talking about?” Jake said, flustered. “What?”

Gina sighed and perched her chin in one hand. “I overheard Amy saying to Rosa that you were moving back into your place today,” Gina said. “And by the way, be very glad that no one’s said anything to Charles because he will lose his goddamn mind if he thinks you two are splitting up.”

“Splitting up? Why would he think that?” Jake said, appalled at even hearing or saying the words “splitting up” in the same verbal universe as Amy.

Gina gave him a narrow-eyed look that clearly conveyed that she thought he was dumb, naïve, frustrating or not funny, and probably all four. “First,” she said, and lifted one finger, “you two kids were talking about moving in together right before you left. Second-” He opened his mouth to reply and she held up two fingers. “You came back from Florida and basically did move in with her. And fourth, you have now moved out.”

“What happened to third?” Jake said.

“You don’t get a third.” Gina held up a hand and the bartender immediately delivered another drink.

“Look, it doesn’t mean anything,” Jake said. “Me and Amy. Amy and I. Whatever. Yes, we’d agreed to live together but then I left. I was only staying with her for a few days because of my leg, but it’s already a lot better and I just-”

He paused, curling his hands around his beer bottle.

“Just what?” Gina said.

“Well, for starters, it seemed presumptuous to assume that Amy still wants to move in together. We haven’t talked about it at all,” Jake said.

“Presumptuous?” Gina said.

“Yeah, you know, like it’d be kind of a dick move-”

“I know what presumptuous means, I’m just surprised you do,” Gina said.

“I know words!” Jake said.

“Okay, so you haven’t talked about it and you didn’t want to get all in her space just because you guys had agreed to that six months ago,” Gina said. “So, why not talk to her about it now?”

“Because I feel like if I bring it up she’ll have to say she wants us to live together,” Jake said. “I mean, she shot me, and you know she feels guilty about it even though she totally shouldn’t. And also, if she says she doesn’t want to live together, that’s sort of like taking a giant step back in our relationship. Like being held back a relationship grade. Amy would never choose to do that.”

“Yeah, okay, I see the dilemma,” Gina said.

“And-” Jake cleared his throat. “I’m kind of not sure I’m ready for us to move in together.”

Gina lifted her eyebrows and leaned back in her chair. “Damn,” she said.

“I don’t want to break up or anything like that,” Jake said quickly. “I love her. So much. It’s just, things are weird. Good, but kind of weird, between us right now. And I feel like after six months apart if we just…pick up exactly where we left off and start shopping for, I don’t know, throw pillows or Le Creuset pots or whatever living-together couples buy, it’d be too much. For both of us.”

“So you’re scared of buying expensive cookware with Amy.”

“No, not scared,” Jake said. He raked a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands at the base of his neck. “I just knew we were there six months ago, and now I don’t.”

“That’s a strange thing to know,” Gina said, but before he could respond she held up a hand. “But I get it. You guys were in certain shared couple headspace six months ago and now you’re not sure you still are, and you can’t ask Amy about it because she’ll feel pressured to say yes because of extenuating circumstances.”

“That’s-” Jake paused. “Actually, that’s exactly right.”

“I have very high relationship intelligence,” Gina said.

“I’m not sure I believe that, but go on,” Jake said. “Tell me what I should do.”

“Oh, I have no idea,” Gina said. “Honestly, this is a pretty boring problem. I was hoping for something way cooler like you’d fathered a whole bunch of half Cuban and Puerto Rican kids who were all going to be born like one after another starting three months from now and Amy was trying to be cool with it, because witness protection is like being on a break, but she was already struggling and the babies weren’t even here yet and she’d kicked you out because you kept getting calls in the middle of the night from the mothers of your unborn children.”

Jake just stared at her and said, “Amy wouldn’t care if they called in the middle of the night because she’s at work then.”

“Seriously, how are you always this boring?” Gina said.

+++

Jake woke the next morning to banging on his front door. Blearily, he wondered if he’d done anything to piss of his neighbors – maybe his crutches were too loud and the couple in the apartment below were annoyed? Or it could be his landlord. Was his rent overdue? He wasn’t even sure what date it was or when he was supposed to start paying it again. He managed a half-limp, half-hop to his door without crutches and pulled it open, rubbing at his eyes.

“Rosa?” he said.

“Here,” she said, and thrust a small paper bag into his hands.

“Uh-” Jake fumbled with the bag. “What- Is this an apology gift for assaulting me last night? You didn’t have to-”

“No, that was an intervention. It was for your own good.”

“Right,” Jake said, staring blankly at her.

“Open it,” Rosa said.

Jake hopped a half step back, gestured to his apartment, “Do you want to come-”

“No.”

“All right,” Jake said. He leaned against the open doorway, taking weight off his bad leg, and peered into the bag. Inside was a small velvet box. “You got me jewelry?”

Rosa glowered at him. Jake sighed and plucked out the box, tucking the bag under his arm. He popped up the lid with his thumb, and for a bemused moment he just stared at what was definitely not a ring. Then he grinned.

“Is this-”

“It’s the bullet. From your leg,” Rosa said. Her mouth twitched.

“Oh my god,” Jake said. It was dented and kind of squashed, but definitely a bullet. It had probably been on the ground, maybe embedded in the pathway where he’d been standing when he’d been shot. Rosa must have rinsed off the blood. “Um, this is evidence.”

“Not our fault that the deputies down there suck,” she said with a shrug. “Anyway, the case against Figgis is solid. They don’t need the bullet.”

Jake nodded, holding the box up to get a better look. He was reluctant to touch the bullet – dear lord, it had been inside him – but he said, “This is so awesome.”

“Don’t show it to Amy,” Rosa said.

He shook his head. That would not go over well.

“Rosa,” he said. “About Amy. Do you think things are okay between us? Because-”

“Things are fine,” Rosa said.

“It’s just-”

“Seriously, don’t overthink it,” she said.

He laughed a little and nodded, and then he marveled again. His very own bullet.

“Thank you,” he said, looking up at her.

“Don’t mention it,” Rosa said. “I’ll see you at work, Jake.”

+++

In the end, Jake decided to back off, just a little, and give both himself and Amy some space. He assumed – he hoped – that soon enough they’d catch up to where they’d left off.

It turned out that backing off was pretty easy when their schedules were so uncoordinated anyway. He tried to adjust to her hours, since they’d be his hours too soon enough, but he was still so mixed up from the pain and fatigue that it was more like he had no schedule at all, or rather that his body was making the call for him. Some nights he felt wired, desperate for sleep but unable to get there, until he managed to slip into a hazy sort of doze for a few hours. Other nights, sitting with Amy on her couch, he couldn’t make it past the appetizer round of Chopped before falling unconscious, so deeply submerged that she had to shake him awake before she left for the precinct. She always told him he could stay and he always insisted on going back to his own place, and she always looked a little sad and they never talked about it.

Jake tried not to dwell on the awkward moments – the time Amy went to hug him and he accidentally fist-bumped her breast, the night she said “later, potater” when she dropped him off at his apartment and then had to explain the story behind the new catchphrase Charles had coined over the summer (which Jake flatly rejected because it was terrible and because he hadn’t been there to bless it).

But mostly, things were good. Things were easy. They touched a lot, and they kissed, and when they cuddled on his couch or hers they took turns holding one another, because Jake liked being the little spoon but he loved the weight of her in his arms too.

They slipped back into nicknames and coded language and entire conversations conducted by raised eyebrows when Amy was on the phone with her mom. As promised, Jake tried to cook breakfast for Amy his first morning back at his apartment – she arrived not long after Rosa had left, and Jake was glad he’d had time to shove the bullet box into his sock drawer – but it turned out even scrambling eggs was hard to do on crutches so they settled on toast with peanut butter and bananas and honey drizzled over the top. After that, they skipped most mornings together, since it was never clear what time Jake would be awake and what time Amy would get off, but they got together in the evenings and mostly they watched bad television and ordered in dinner and just talked, like they always had. They talked about their days, or their nights, and they caught each other up on everything that had happened over the past six months.

“Do you think it’s at all possible that Captain Holt has a tattoo of me on a dragon?” Jake said, after he’d told the entire story of the Go Karts and the viral video and the tanning bed lady and his argument with Holt and how they’d made up again and decided to go after Figgis together.

“Sorry, babe. I really don’t,” Amy said, quickly kissing the corner of his mouth. She went quiet for a moment, chewing her lip. “You know-”

Jake waited for her to go on, turning toward her when she didn’t right away. “Know what?”

“Never mind,” Amy said.

“Uh, no,” Jake said. “What were you going to say?”

Amy tucked her legs up under herself. They were sitting on his couch, the remnants of Pad Thai and fried rice congealing in takeout boxes on his coffee table.

“When you were down there, sometimes I’d feel a little-” She paused again, a faint blush creeping up her neck. “God, this is embarrassing.”

“Horny?” Jake said. “You felt a little horny?”

“Jake! No!” Amy said, and then quickly added, “I mean, yes, but that’s not what I was going to say.”

“So you did feel horny for me,” Jake said. “You want to tell me about it? Please tell me about it.”

“I felt jealous,” Amy said, all in a rush.

“Jealous?” Jake said. “Of what?”

The blush was full-blown now, her cheeks bright pink. It was adorable, but Jake was confused.

“Jealous,” he said again, thinking hard. “You were- oh my god.”

Amy buried her face in her hands. “I know,” she said miserably. “It’s just, you know how much he means to me, and how much I value our time together. And you got six months. Six months, Jake!”

Jake wondered if he should feel angry or insulted, but he didn’t feel either. He just loved her, every nerdy, ridiculous molecule of her.

“Holt has very soft lips, you know,” Jake said. She threw a packet of soy sauce at him.

+++

His first Saturday back home, Jake had a meeting with a therapist, mandatory because he was a cop who’d been shot, even if technically he hadn’t been on duty at the time. He knew Amy had to go too, and he wondered if it was the same therapist. He sort of hoped so, because even though therapists weren’t supposed to share information about their patients, Jake couldn’t have made it more clear that getting shot by his girlfriend did not bother him at all. If the therapist knew that then surely she’d find a way to help Amy understand. It wasn’t like Amy was a mess about it, but he could tell by the way her eyebrows turned in and the little lines formed between her eyes every time he gave any sign of being in pain that she felt bad.

He was really fine, though. The therapist spent most of their session talking about post-traumatic stress and how terrifying it must have been to be held at gunpoint and then to have been injured by his partner-slash-girlfriend, but really, all Jake felt about the whole thing was enormous relief and gratitude. He’d been in life-or-death situations before, but the overriding thought in his head this time around had been ‘the motherfucker cannot get away.’ Jake had been terrified, yes – of Figgis escaping, of Jake and Holt being forced back into hiding again, of maybe this time losing Amy for good. After Amy had run back to him – after she’d shot him – and told him Figgis was in custody, every other concern had disappeared. His leg hurt like crazy and Amy’s hands were covered in his blood and he thought he might pass out, but they were together and Figgis was over and he was going home.

The therapist seemed to buy that eventually, and they spent the last 15 minutes of his session talking about his obvious dad issues and not for the first time, Jake left therapy feeling far less sane than he had going in. Once outside, he decided to try hobbling his way home instead of calling a car, hoping the exercise might clear his head. He stopped for a coffee first before realizing he couldn’t carry it with him while on crutches, so he sat on a bench outside, across from McCarren Park. Behind him was a bar, closed for the afternoon, but a side door had been propped open and Jake could hear the clang of dishes being washed, the chatter of cooks and wait staff prepping for the night shift. In the park he saw dogs on leashes and children who probably should have been leashed, and people on bikes and, weirdly, on rollerskates, and a group of teenagers tossing a Frisbee on the grass near the track.

It was a warm day but there was a crispness in the breeze, which every now and then shook the drying orange and brown and yellow leaves on the trees edging the park. He could smell them, where they’d fallen in the gutter and started to mold a little. And he could smell the faintest trace of urine, and of disinfectant, and old garbage and hot dog water and the hot grease coming from either the pizza place or the Chinese place down the street, or probably both.

Jake closed his eyes and thought, ‘I missed this.’

+++

Amy had to work that Saturday, but they spent the entire day together Sunday, starting with pancakes at a diner near Jake’s place and then a long nap in his sunlit bedroom. Jake stayed with her in bed while she slept, pulling a battered copy of the third Harry Potter that he’d bought at a used book store in Florida. He still hadn’t told her he was reading them, and he wasn’t sure why. She’d be so excited. He thought maybe he was waiting for the right moment to really impress her.

When Amy woke up they lounged around his apartment and then decided to see a movie – like in an actual theater, with other people around – and it turned out to be a bit of a disaster because there weren’t any movies either of them was particularly excited about so they chose a random, lightweight comedy that was pretty disappointing, and also, Jake had forgotten that they could never agree on movie snacks because he needed extra butter on his popcorn and Amy thought the grease was gross and she hated Junior Mints, which was just crazy. On top of that, the seats were cramped and he couldn’t find a position that didn’t make his leg lock up in pain.

They ended up leaving early when Amy realized why he was fidgeting so much, but the walk home was nice, even on crutches. It was cool out but not cold, and Jake wanted badly to hold her hand but of course he couldn’t. But at every intersection Amy squeezed his hand or his shoulder, or cupped her hand over the back of his neck, or kissed him, if they were stopped at a long traffic light.

Back at his place, they made out on his bed for a while, Hot Fuzz momentarily distracting them, and when the movie ended Jake rolled onto his good side and pulled her against him and said he was ready if she was, and he knew she felt his erection. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he nodded back, and she kept searching his face and he nodded again and he suddenly had a weird flashback to when she shot him, and he laughed and said, “Let’s do this,” which wasn’t his most romantic line but got the job done.

He still couldn’t bear enough weight on his leg to go with missionary, and Amy on top was too excruciating to even think about, but he thought they could make it work if they were both on their sides, Amy’s back to him. It wasn’t a position they’d ever tried before but only because everything else in their repertoire had worked so well. It turned out to be more painful than Jake had expected – his thigh just didn’t like any sort of repetitive motion – but not painful enough to be a boner killer. Which he made the mistake of saying to Amy when they were done.

They were naked, her back pressed into his chest, her hand holding fast to his where he’d rested it on her belly. His other hand was tucked up under his head and he was nuzzling her neck through her hair, thinking how perfect everything was, just now, despite the residual ache in his leg and the sweat that was drying sticky on both their bodies.

But after a few minutes of silence, as his eyes were slipping shut, he could feel her shaking just a little, and then he heard the faint hitch of her breath. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back and then he could tell she was crying for real by the way her body was trembling.

“Hey, Ames,” he said, gently rolling her toward him. She kept her face turned away but he could see tears on her cheeks and he felt sick.

“I hurt you,” she said, looking fiercely toward the wall and not at him. She took a deep breath, and though her voice was breaking it was firm too. “I shot you, Jake. I did that. I did that to you. And I know everyone thinks it was the right thing to do, but I still can’t believe I did it. I love you, and I hurt you. And I don’t know how to be okay with that.”

Her words broke off then and she was crying for real, and Jake held her to him as close as he could, one hand smoothing down over her hair, brushing across her cheeks to wipe away tears, and even though it sucked he waited a while, not saying a word. When she’d calmed down, he tucked his arm back under his head and he loosened his grip on her hand, just a bit, and kissed her at the corner of her eye.

“First,” he said, pausing to clear his throat because apparently he was a little choked up too, “first, in case it isn’t clear, I have absolutely no problem with how things went down. Figgis was 100 percent going to shoot me in the head, Amy. He was either going to do it right there in front of you or later if you let him get away, but either way, I was a dead man. And also, if you’d let him get away I would have been so fucking mad, babe. Because that asshole ruined my life. I mean, just for six months, but it was so terrible, Ames.”

“Jake, I-”

“Ah, hold on,” Jake said, and pressed a kiss to her lips to keep her quiet. “I’m not done. Second, and this is totally true, I’ve always kind of wanted to be shot and this was, like, the perfect scenario.”

Amy stared at him. “That is so creepy and wrong,” she said.

“I know,” Jake said, brushing her off. “But c’mon, getting shot is the most badass thing, but it can go so wrong, right? Like, obviously you can die. Or you can be horribly, permanently disabled. But getting shot by someone who knows what they’re doing means you’ve just got a really cool injury and then a scar. Also, there’s literally nothing embarrassing about what went down – like, I didn’t accidentally shoot myself or get shot in the butt or the toe or whatever. My situation was awesome: Cool, non-life-threatening injury, in a very dramatic hostage situation, shot by the woman I love so much who is also the bravest person I know.”

He kissed her again, and before she could speak he said, “And third, you saved my life, Amy.”

She looked up at him, eyes wet, but she was smiling now. “You said that one already.”

“It’s kind of important to me,” he said.

“Me too,” Amy said. She reached for him, hand on his cheek, and moved her gaze all around his face before settling on his eyes. “I guess- I’m glad I shot you?”

“Title of your sex tape,” Jake said.

“That doesn’t even work,” Amy said, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

“It does.”

“It really doesn’t.”

“Agree to disagree,” he said, and then he kissed her and they stopped talking about it.

+++

Charles came by his place Monday afternoon. He had the biggest photo album Jake had ever seen.

“I brought it to Florida to show you but there wasn’t time,” Charles said, dropping onto Jake’s couch and patting the spot beside him. “C’mon, hop to it. Nikolaj is only in preschool for another two hours.”

Charles had also brought giant deli sandwiches and a family-sized bag of cheese puffs and a 2-liter of orange soda, so Jake fell onto the couch next to him, legs up on the table. He thought about asking Charles how Amy was doing, if she seemed okay, if she’d said anything about them. But instead, he sat back with his sandwich and he ate and he listened. It was nice.

+++

He’d been back nine days when his doctor asked him to try putting weight on his bad leg, and he managed a few steps around the cramped exam room. In truth, he’d been limping around his apartment without crutches for a few days but he didn’t tell her that.

“So I’m ready to go back to work?” Jake said, using his good leg to hoist himself back up onto the table. He’d stripped down to his boxers so she could take a look at the wound. The stitches had come out already and the scar was puckered, an angry purple and red. He liked it.

“Definitely not,” the doctor said, as she pushed at the skin around the injury. It hurt, but not a lot – like someone poking at an old bruise.

“But if I did go back to work-” Jake said.

“Just because you can walk a few steps does not mean you should go back to work,” the doctor said, firmly.

“But if I did-” Jake said.

“If anyone calls here and asks, I will them that you are working AMA and that I recommended another week of bedrest.”

“Cool. Coolcoolcoolcoolcool,” Jake said.

The doctor sighed and handed him a prescription to pick up a cane from the pharmacy downstairs.

+++

Thirty-six hours later, he was in Captain Holt’s office – it was 4:18 a.m., he had an icepack taped to his thigh and his leg propped up on the coffee table, and Holt and Terry were staring him down.

“What part of ‘light duty’ did you interpret to mean ‘confront a suspect without backup, attempt to chase him on foot, commandeer a civilian car and crash the civilian car into a garbage truck?” Holt said.

Jake opened his mouth and Holt added, “Please do not answer that question.”

Holt placed Jake’s report on his desk and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.

Terry said, “You weren’t cleared for duty, were you.”

Jake kept his mouth shut. Holt opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “You should answer that one.”

“I-” Jake said. “Yes?”

“I didn’t think so,” Terry said. He turned to Holt. “You want me to kick his ass? I promised I would last time he did this.”

“Yes, but I feel that would be counterproductive,” Holt said. He looked at Jake and folded his hands in front of him. “I get it, Peralta. We are home, we want everything to be back to normal. You think I like being stuck behind this desk all night, nursing my own impalement injury?”

“Sir, don’t say impalement ever again,” Jake said, swallowing hard at the image that came up. The very real image. From a very real memory.

“It’s an adjustment,” Holt went on. “For all of us. But especially for me and you. We all need to take things slowly, and not just because of our injuries.”

Jake did understand. He hadn’t slept much that day – between disappointment that his first night back at work had gone so badly and the bright afternoon sun streaming into his bedroom, he hadn’t been able to turn off his brain. Lohank – god, Lohank, of all people – had helped him face some of his frustration. The rest of it, the most important parts, he thought he could already feel slotting back into place.

“I know, sir,” Jake said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Damn right it won’t,” Terry said. “You’re on desk duty until further notice.”

Jake wanted to protest just on principle. Instead he said, “Fine, but can I work from your couch the rest of the night? My leg hurts, real bad.”

Terry actually growled as he stormed out of the office. Holt just stared at him impassively then opened up a new file.

+++

His leg was stiff from foot to hip by the time he tottered out of the precinct just after sunrise. Amy had some paperwork to wrap up, so he left her there and made his tortuously slow way to a toy store and then on to Charles’ place, where he spent 45 minutes playing trucks with Nikolaj before his leg started really screaming. He definitely was not up to being on his feet for hours at a time, or chasing bad guys down a few stairs, or crashing cars, or sitting on the floor playing with a 4-year-old. It was dumb how much he hurt.

Still, he was in a good mood as he waited for his Uber to arrive, the mild New York City sun warming his face, traffic screaming by, someone literally screaming at the other end of the block. Jake craned his neck to see if anyone was in trouble, not that he was in any condition to intervene. But it was just two men arguing over a dog that had peed on someone’s shoe. Everything was normal and wonderful.

He got out of the car and climbed the stairs, and when Amy answered his knock she was breathtaking, changed into a tank top and low-riding yoga pants, her hair still wet from the shower.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” he said.

“You mean today?” she said.

He laughed, and she moved aside to let him in.

Amy got him a couple of ibuprofen and some water and a new ice pack, and she pulled the curtains and they crawled into bed together.

As he held Amy close, Jake thought maybe he should get some blackout curtains too, because they were amazing. And then he thought why bother, he could just stay here every night. And then he was asleep.

THE END


End file.
